In a short meeting Wednesday, the St. Croix Elections Board elected officers, naming Adelbert Bryan as the chairman, chose a date for regular meetings and devoted most of an hour to bickering among themselves.
Two meetings scheduled in January with the same agenda were cancelled due to a lack of quorum, with members who showed up clearly frustrated at the lack of participation by the others.
The meeting was called to order by Vice Chairman Barbara Jackson McIntosh and began with new board member Epiphane Joseph’s motion to elect Bryan as chairman and Glenn Webster as secretary. In turn, Webster nominated Joseph to serve as vice chairman. Bryan, Webster and Joseph voted for themselves and McIntosh and Raymond Williams voted against.
McIntosh then turned over the gavel to Bryan who berated Williams for standing rather than sitting at the board table and chastised Terrell Alexandre, board assistant, for not paying stipends to board members. McIntosh pointed out that two previous meetings did not achieve a quorum and were canceled, and one meeting was not called by the board chair or vice chair, so the invoices were not approved.
Alexandre responded there was no funding to pay the invoices and Williams left the meeting. According to Elections Supervisor Caroline Fawkes, the quarterly allotment from the V.I. Government had not been received.
After Lisa Harris-Moorhead joined the meeting, Fawkes asked if any board member wanted to attend a three-day Elections Assistance Commission conference in April. The trip is sponsored by the EAC at no cost to the V.I. government, she added. Harris-Moorhead said she would like to attend the conference and Bryan said, as chairman of the board, he should attend. A majority vote approved Harris-Moorhead to attend the conference with Fawkes and Deputy Supervisor Genevieve Whitaker.
After some discussion, the board settled on 10 a.m. on the first Wednesday of each month for future meetings.
McIntosh has been running meetings since December when the board voted to remove Lilliana Belardo de O’Neal, chairman (see link).
The Joint Board of Elections is scheduled to meet Friday on St. Croix.
